Texture names are unsigned integers. The value zero is reserved to represent the default texture for each texture target. Texture names and the corresponding texture contents are local to the shared object space of the current GL rendering context; two rendering contexts share texture names only if they explicitly enable sharing between contexts through the appropriate GL windows interfaces functions.

When a texture is first bound, it assumes the specified target: A texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_1D becomes one-dimensional texture, a texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_2D becomes two-dimensional texture, a texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_3D becomes three-dimensional texture, a texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_1D_ARRAY becomes one-dimensional array texture, a texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_2D_ARRAY becomes two-dimensional arary texture, a texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_RECTANGLE becomes rectangle texture, a, texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_CUBE_MAP becomes a cube-mapped texture, a texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE becomes a two-dimensional multisampled texture, and a texture first bound to _GL_TEXTURE_2D_MULTISAMPLE_ARRAY becomes a two-dimensional multisampled array texture. The state of a one-dimensional texture immediately after it is first bound is equivalent to the state of the default _GL_TEXTURE_1D at GL initialization, and similarly for the other texture types.

While a texture is bound, GL operations on the target to which it is bound affect the bound texture, and queries of the target to which it is bound return state from the bound texture. In effect, the texture targets become aliases for the textures currently bound to them, and the texture name zero refers to the default textures that were bound to them at initialization.

A texture binding created with _glBindTexture remains active until a different texture is bound to the same target, or until the bound texture is deleted with _glDeleteTextures.

Once created, a named texture may be re-bound to its same original target as often as needed. It is usually much faster to use _glBindTexture to bind an existing named texture to one of the texture targets than it is to reload the texture image using _glTexImage1D, _glTexImage2D, _glTexImage3D or another similar function.